Picturing the Great WarThe First World War Blog from Mary Evans Picture Library

A Tonic for the Troops - Winter Warmers on the Western Front

February sometimes feels the most wintery of all the winter months, so if you're yet to discard the thermal layers , take a timely tonic with Mary Evans Picture Library, as we sample the non-alcoholic health beverages of the First World War, and their power to nourish and cheer.

This blog has already visited the Fortune of War cafes and highlighted the important service provided at free train stations buffets for soldiers, but the simple uplifting power of a hot cup of tea is often extolled in the wartime periodicals in our archive. The cup that cheers but does not inebriate was a welcome warmer in harsh weather conditions, whether on the front lines or the home front. David Lloyd George famously identified alcohol as the deadlier enemy than Germany or Austria, making choosing non-alcoholic cheer a small but psychologically significant part of supporting the war effort.

                        

Some beverages were marketed as a meal substitute for the troops, with a drink of hot cocoa an alternative to breakfast, and Horlicks malted milk tablets suggested as a lunch substitute for those on active service lunch requiring strength and energy. Cocoa was also promoted as a sustaining and nourishing drink for the nursery, supplementing children’s diets restricted by wartime rationing.

Bovril, a beef tea, was credited in their promotional material with having body-building effects, aiding war workers. In an advert of 1916, one muscle-bound munitions worker attributed his “splendid health and energy” to drinking Bovril regularly for a year. If one advert from July 1918 is to be believed, Freeman’s Glass Lemon, a refreshing instant lemonade drink to be diluted with water, was also a popular beverage with British  troops.

    


Ovaltine was promoted as a ‘tonic food beverage’, ideal as a nerve restorative, for convalescence and as nourishment for those of ‘feeble digestion’. In an advert in The Graphic from November 1918, it was claimed that Ovaltine could “guard against nervous breakdown, which results from strain of overwork, worry and concentrated mental effort...it supplies extra food needed to rebuild the worn nerve cells.”

      

Several brands such as Oxo, Ovaltine, Horlicks and Bovril are still familiar and going strong today, showing the continuing appeal of their products a century later, although in a much changed world. Even today, reading the marketing material for Ovaltine(“…gives strength, vitality and endurance, is a splendid pick me up, and as a restorative in fatigue has no equal.”) makes this blogger feel like rushing home and drinking three mugfuls. Cheers!

Click the link to see our refreshing selection of war-related beverage images   http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=41914

     

© Lucinda Moore/Mary Evans Picture Library

 

Britain's Bread - Wartime wheat & feeding the nation

Before the start of the First World War, Britain relied heavily on imported grain from America for the production of bread. With the availability of grain limited by unrestricted German submarine warfare from January 1917, combined with a poorer than expected harvest in 1916 and the continued depletion of man power following conscription, resources were rallied to the important cause of providing the populous with bread. 

As a nation, white bread was preferred over brown, but as this used more flour than wholemeal bread, economies had to be made. Advertisements in the press promoted the making of homemade and wholemeal bread, rather than white, in an attempt to redress the problem of shortages. Whether for homemade bread or that of the commercial bakery, bread flour could be bulked out using alternative non-wheat ingredients, such as cooked rice, potato and rye. To maximise production from the limited wheat resources available, ‘standard flour’ was introduced by the Wheat Commission in Britain, which included more of the coarser husk that was extracted from the grain. Germany instigated similar changes in January 1915, with a law passed stipulating that wheaten bread must contain at least 10% rye, and rye bread must contain at least 12% potato flour. Known as war bread, this was darker and had a different texture than the usual fare due to the change in ingredients.

 

On the front lines as well as back in Blighty, bread represented an important part of the diet of soldiers of all nationalities. Field bakeries were constructed to provide vast quantities of fresh bread for the troops, with the illustrated periodicals in the archive here at Mary Evans testifying to the impressive logistical feat alone that was the production and delivery of so many loaves. In November 1915, The Graphic described the production of the Russian army’s staple, black bread, in an illustrated piece: “Huge stores of rye flour are accumulated for the Army. At the rear field-bakeries are established, the ground being excavated for the purpose. Ditches are lined with brick or stone, and a little sheet iron chimney is provided. When the bricks are sufficiently heated and the ashes removed, a military baker puts the dough on a long-handled wooden shovel and thrusts it into the hot oven.”

Efforts were made to reduce bread consumption through government campaigns promoting voluntary rationing, with images used on posters to discourage wastage for the sake of the war.

                 

      
 

The Bread Order of May 1917 prohibited the sale of bread that was less than 12 hours old, in an attempt by the Ministry of Food to reduce consumption. Less appetizing and easier to slice thinly when stale, the Bread Order enabled limited resources to be stretched further. Another benefit of the Bread Order meant that rather than baking bread overnight so it could be sold fresh in the morning(as men had traditionally done before the war), women performing this role whilst the men were away at the front would not have to make their way home in the dark in the early hours. Cooking in the daytime also saved fuel, as lighting was not required, providing further economies welcome to the government in wartime.

                           

In the same month as the Bread Order was introduced, National Kitchens (also known as National Restaurants) were established to sell nutritious food at cost to the public; the building that today houses Mary Evans Picture Library served as a National Kitchen during the Second World War. Though I stopped short of recreating our own field kitchen out on the heath, in keeping with our building’s role in wartime food economy, and in honour of the ninth annual Real Bread Week a fortnight ago (6^th-14^th May), I recreated a bread recipe that appeared in The Bystander very shortly after the outbreak of war in their issue dated 19^th August 1914. Under the title ‘Economical Cookery for the War Time’, the recipe for homemade bread was followed by a less enticing one for sheep hearts, but didn’t yet feature the non-wheat additives seen later as the war progressed. Though compulsory food rationing wasn’t introduced until January 1918, with bread never officially being rationed as it was considered an essential, this recipe reflected an expectation even at the very start of the war that food economies would have to be made.

 Whether through reducing bread consumption, altering flour composition or making your own bread at home using flour substitutes, many tactics were employed during the First World War on both sides to stretch wheat supplies to feed the people and the troops. One hundred years on, national wheat shortages in Britain are thankfully a thing of the past, but even today the effects of war and climate still can leave a country’s wheat and other food resources dangerously depleted, such as in South Sudan which today faces famine. Here in Britain, wheat-free alternatives are still in the public mind, though this time inspired by the advent of gluten-free eating for its perceived health benefits, rather than due to the economies of wartime. As they were in wartime, ingredients such as rice flour and potato starch are still used today as substitutes for wheat in commercially produced gluten-free bread. Some things don’t change…

To see a wider selection of Great War bread pictures, follow the link http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=39438

© Lucinda Moore/Mary Evans Picture Library

One Family's War - the Patricia Aubrey Collection

         

A fascinating collection from one of our contributors, Patricia Aubrey, offers a unique insight into the First World War and how it affected the members of one particular family. Patricia's collection, consisting mainly of the Auerbach family’s photo albums and related items, dates from the late 19th century through to the mid-20th century, and the early 20th century material is of particular interest.

Arthur Auerbach (above) was born in London in 1862: his parents, Albert and Amelia, were German emigrants from Stuttgart. As young men, Arthur and his elder brother Julius went to South Africa to work for their uncle's import/export company, Dreyfus and Co. It was there, in King William's Town, that Arthur met and married Ellen Peters (born in Bristol in 1861); a daughter, Lucy (nicknamed Boo) was born in 1890, and a son, Albert, in 1894. In 1895, perhaps for a combination of personal and business reasons, they decided to return to the UK, and went to live in Ealing, West London, near Arthur's widowed mother, who passed away at the end of that year. Over the next few years two more children were born: Patricia's father, Harold, in 1897, and Violet, in 1903. Not long after Harold's birth, the family settled into a large house at 1 Carlton Road, Ealing: early photos show them at home, mostly in the front or back garden, where hoops set up for croquet can be seen, as well as one amusing snap of the paterfamilias in the morning room.

There are some atmospheric images of the front garden in the snow, as well as evidence of how rural-looking Ealing was in Edwardian days, with a long, tree-lined road, Longfield Avenue, seen in summer and winter. Summer holiday photos outside London show the family, together with friends, at various English seaside places, such as Scarborough and Saltburn, both on the North Yorkshire coast, but more often than not in Southwold, Suffolk, where the Auerbachs had a holiday home at 25 North Parade which they visited regularly over the years.

 

As the children grow up, there are photos of them in school uniform, practising cricket, relaxing at a local tennis club, Lucy in fancy dress, Violet with her dolls, and a good number of teachers, pupils and buildings at Marlborough College in Wiltshire, where Albert went to school and took part in Officers' Training Corps activities as early as 1910. Harold and Lucy were both artistic, and went on sketching holidays to Switzerland in around 1910.

Harold (who ten years later studied at the Slade School of Art) recorded visits to various Swiss locations in his sketchbook, while Lucy can be seen in a 'finishing school' group of young women, sketching outdoors with their tutor, George J Flemwell, some of whose Swiss scenery from that same period we also hold in the Library in the form of book illustrations.

After these scenes of seemingly idyllic Edwardian family life, it’s very sad to see signs of war approaching, with the two sons getting into uniform and going off to various places for training.

(Below) Harold (left) and Albert (right) in uniform posed in the garden with their mother, Ellen.

As mentioned, Albert was already involved in military training through his school, which probably made it all the easier for him to join the UOTC (University Officers' Training Corps) on 1 September 1914, the very first day of the war, as a private in the 20th Battalion, Royal Fusiliers. We see him with colleagues at training camps in Woodcote Park, Epsom, and relaxing in the grass during a route march from Clipstone Camp near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. On 20 July 1915 he received his commission as 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st London Regiment, Royal Fusiliers, and there are photos of him marching through a street in Peckham Rye, south-east London, at the head of a column of men. Later we see him overseas in Egypt and France.

Harold, for his part, was held back by a knee injury received during a rugby match at his prep school, Durston House in Ealing, which explains his presence in a bathchair in earlier holiday photos. Despite his Officers' Training Corps activities through St Paul's School, Hammersmith, he found it difficult to enlist at first, as confirmed by two letters, one from the Artists' Rifles in October 1915, the other from the London Rifle Brigade in September 1916, both declaring him unfit for service. But, like his elder brother, he was determined to serve, and he can be seen in Royal Engineers uniform in one or two photos.

He was eventually accepted by the Royal Flying Corps, and sent to Oxford for training in the spring of 1917; he received his graduation certificate, complete with ‘wings’ badge, in November 1917. He was then posted to the Western Front to work in air reconnaissance, using both observation balloons and aeroplanes. There are some detailed official aerial shots of locations in Belgium (Abele and Hollebeke) and Northern France (Villeselve and Clairmarais), dating from 1917 and 1918, showing the local landscape with bomb damage and trenches. Two particularly striking photos show the French town of Bailleul at different stages in 1918, before and after German bombing.

                                                            Harold picture far right (below)

While the two brothers were away fighting, mother Ellen and sister Lucy were making their own contributions to the war effort on the Home Front. There are photos of Ellen in her volunteer Red Cross nurse's uniform: she may well have been connected to one of Ealing's many war hospitals, helping with wounded and convalescent soldiers. Lucy was working at the War Office in London, but occasionally went off to the village of Madresfield, near Malvern in Worcestershire, to help with agricultural and dairy work, and perhaps to give herself a welcome rural break from the stresses of wartime London life. Lucy adored her brother Albert, and the two of them corresponded throughout his wartime absences.

 

Albert & his fiancée, Molly Bowie (above)

Albert's war took him to a variety of places. His first posting was to Gallipoli in November 1915, which seems to have begun in luxury, judging by a menu card from his voyage on board the RMS Olympic, used at the time as a troop transport ship. Once at Gallipoli, however, the real work began, and he was involved in the evacuation of Suvla Bay and Cape Helles. From there he went on to Egypt, then to France, until he was invalided home with shell shock and dysentery on 3 December 1916. He spent some time in hospital, and photos from this extended period of sick leave, for example with his fiancée Molly Bowie in Cheam, Surrey, give an indication of how much his illness had aged him. But eventually he returned to France on 20 June 1918, and here his luck ran out. He was killed by a shell at Bouchavesnes, Péronne, on the Somme, in the early morning of 1 September 1918, exactly four years to the day of his joining up. Albert was posthumously awarded the Military Cross, which was presented to his mother at Wellington Barracks, London, on 10 July 1919. His sister Lucy made her own personal pilgrimage to the Somme area in September 1920 to see where her brother had fought and died.

Despite the constant dangers of his air reconnaissance work, Harold survived the war, and in due course was awarded his Campaign Medal. The medal itself was missing for years, but Harold's daughter recently came across it, up for sale on an internet auction site – it had only just been listed there, after being discovered at the back of a drawer in a piece of furniture in Plymouth. It's a complete mystery how it came to be there, and a miracle that Patricia found the medal by googling at just the right time, before anyone else had had a chance to buy it. It's even possible that Harold, not wishing to be reminded of the war, had never even claimed his medal, as Patricia has no memories of seeing it in the family home. Two photographs of the medal have now been added to the collection on our website, to round off a fascinating, touching, and sometimes sobering tour of one family's experiences before, during and after the First World War.

To see more images from this fascinating collection, follow the link here:

http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=38847

 

 

 

© Gill Stoker/Mary Evans Picture Library

The Whale's War: Mines, meat and oil for feet

From the miniature to the mighty, the First World War impacted on the lives of many creatures, not just the war horse or the messenger dog (visited earlier by this blog). Following the recent stranding this month of over 400 pilot whales at Farewell Spit in New Zealand, we take a timely look back at the perhaps unexpected ways in which the war affected whales, and the contribution that whales made to the war effort.

Two aerial images, published after the war in 1919 in The Illustrated London News, show how, from the air, the silhouette of a whale could easily be mistaken for a submarine beneath the surface of the water. The Illustrated London News reported that a policy of ‘when in doubt, bomb’ was adopted, making whales an unwitting casualty of the war.

Though some whales were mistaken for U-boats when viewed from the air, in death, a floating whale could similarly be mistaken for a downed zeppelin. The throat and abdomen of the whale becomes distended with the gases of decomposition, causing it to be buoyed upwards in the water, belly first. On 17 October 1914, the lifeboat team at Margate in Kent set out to rescue possible survivors of a ‘sinking zeppelin’ that had been spotted out at sea. They returned disappointed, as the zeppelin was discovered to be merely a bloated whale carcass, floating in the water. Eager crowds gathered to see the prisoners of war they imagined to be plucked from the stranded zeppelin, but they too were disappointed. Instead, further down the coast at Birchington, the 61ft long body of a female common rorqual whale was later washed up on to the beach, probably the victim of a mine, rather than an aerial attack.

William Plane Pycraft, the eminent zoologist and regular contributor to The Illustrated London News, was there in his official role as an employee of the Natural History Museum, and set about the slippery business of taking the Birchington whale’s measurements at low tide. In 1913, in response to a mass stranding of fifty sperm whales in Cornwall, the Natural History Museum was given the rights to collect whales and other cetaceans washed up on our shores; until then, a 1324 statute had only granted this to the Crown, the creatures being known as ‘Fishes Royal’. The data gathered provided useful information when little was known about these rarely seen mammals. The two white lines in the photograph mark the size of the wound on the whale’s body; Pycraft reports that the enormous gash in the abdomen could easily have accommodated a large armchair, with more room besides. The war had started only months before, but already the potential impact even on sea life could be seen. Though it was just one death in a war in which millions would die, there seems a terrible waste of life and a deal of pathos in the loss of a creature as majestic as the Birchington whale.

Though bombs and mines were bad news for the whales, their corpses could contribute to the war effort. Pycraft highlighted the opportunity of using beached whales, porpoises and dolphins as an under-utilised source of protein when meat was rationed. He even went to the lengths of sampling some, when a very elderly, deceased whale, measuring 11ft and weighing nearly half a ton, came under his charge. He also reproduced these menus in his regular editorial column in The Illustrated London News from a whale steak luncheon given at the American Museum of Natural History on 8 February 1918, in the interests of food conservation. Pycraft relates that the whale liver was tough, though similar to bullock’s liver in flavour, with every promise of it making a good soup. The flesh from the blade bone was rubbery, and the meat from other parts of the whale varied in tenderness, rather than flavour.

Whales even had a part to play on the front lines. Whale oil had valuable health benefits when it was employed to prevent trench foot, as when it was rubbed into the foot it formed a protective waterproof barrier. Soldiers were ordered to administer daily greasing to each other’s feet to maintain good foot health, with some estimates suggesting that a single battalion at the front (approximately 1,000 men) could get through 10 gallons (an impressive 80 pints) of whale oil a day.

Whale oil was also used in the production of the high explosive nitro-glycerine. Whale fat was a rich source of glycerol, which was released when the whale fat was treated with an alkali. Nitro-glycerine was then produced by reacting glycerol with concentrated nitric and sulphuric acids, and was used extensively throughout the war as an explosive.

Whales who found themselves caught up in a human conflict unwittingly became a valuable resource for food, foot care, ammunition and even information about their kind during the First World War. The small but significant role played by whales in wartime is worthy of acknowledgement, and a reflection of the all-encompassing nature of total war.

Taken from ‘Animals in the Great War’ by Lucinda Moore, to be published March 2017.

http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Animals-in-the-Great-War-Paperback/p/12729 

Woods in Wartime - Trees on the Front Line

“To me, half the war is a memory of trees: fallen and tortured trees, trees untouched in summer moonlight, torn and shattered winter trees, trees green and brown, grey and white, living and dead. They gave names to our roads and trenches, strongpoints and areas. Beneath their branches I found the best and the worst of war: heard nightingales and smelt primroses, heard the scream of endless shells and breathed gas; rested in their shade, spied from their branches, cowered in their roots. They carried our telephone lines, hid our horses, guided us to and from battle and formed the memorial to many efforts of arms.” - Lt. Richard Talbot Kelly, 52nd Brigade RFA. Quoted in Tommy’s Ark by Richard van Emden.

As the leaves on the trees here in London continue to fall and the weather turns colder, we take a timely look at the diverse roles that trees played on the front lines during the Great War.

On a purely practical level, trees were a valuable on-site resource on the Western Front. Their trunks were used as notice boards to disseminate information, with newspapers pinned on their trunks for troops to read. Wood provided the duckboards to traverse the sodden terrain, and more bleakly, provided the crosses to mark the graves of the dead. Troops on the move used woods as resting places of a more temporary variety, and for what shelter that they could afford, with roots and even hollow tree trunks offering sanctuary when required. Road-side trees could be felled and laid across roads to create impromptu roadblocks to impede the advancing enemy, as these near Havrincourt cut down by German soldiers during the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917.

        

 

        

Tall trees made good observation posts, and leaf cover could offer protection for snipers hidden in their branches. Mike Sheil's Fields of Battle photographs, which document the battlefields of WW1 as they are today, holds this image of rungs hammered into the trunk of the tree, still living today more than a century on, which served as a German observation post at Bois d’Ormont at Verdun.

        

 

        

Trees and woods were used as navigational landmarks, but could also be portents of danger. Whilst trees branches could protect, they could also pose a risk, for example by snagging and trapping falling parachutists, making them targets for enemy fire. When the Newfoundland Regiment advanced on the first day of the battle of the Somme, July 1st 1916, a clump of trees half way into no man’s land was used as a marker, where a narrow entrance had been cut into the enemy’s wire. Unfortunately, the highly visible trees became a draw for heavy enemy fire, with the Newfoundland Regiment suffering substantial losses close by, and piles of corpses reportedly impeding the waves of the advancing troops. Earning the name the Danger Tree, the twisted remains of a trunk and skeletal branches became a memorial to the men who fell there, with the Illustrated London News publishing this picture of the Danger Tree more than a decade on in 1927. A tree set in a concrete base still stands on the site to this day, but is thought not to be the original tree.

 


 

Trees also could aid with camouflage and deceiving the enemy; The Illustrated London News in 1916 reported the surprise of two French prisoners of war who, attempting to escape via the German-Dutch border, discovered that the German sentry they intended to overpower was in fact a pollarded tree, made to look like a German soldier bearing arms.

The therapeutic aspect of being amongst trees and the pleasure they could bring in the midst of the chaos of war may seem a minor detail, but their value in this regard is worth acknowledging. The Graphic reproduced a photograph of French soldiers felling a small fir tree at Christmas time, with reports of Germans decorating their trenches with them. A potted Christmas tree can be seen on a depiction of the Christmas Eve Truce by A.C. Michael, special artist for The Illustrated London News, and The Sphere depicts German and British troops fraternising, posing for a camera brandishing holly branches and with mistletoe on their uniforms.

                  

Even as the war was raging a century ago, nature still had the power to uplift and to regenerate in the face of great adversity. The Graphic Summer Number of 1917 devoted a page to the fruit trees of Passchendale, which continued to blossom despite being almost completely torn down. Entitled ‘Beauty in spite of the beast: the spirit of summer triumphs over Teuton devilry”, The Graphic interpreted these trees as “symbolising the spirit of France: these fruit trees, though sorely tested, decline to die.”

                                                                    

Whether offering sanctuary and shelter, having therapeutic value or warning of danger, trees had a small but significant part to play on the front lines, far beyond being merely a detail of nature in a war-ravaged landscape. It’s poignant to reflect that some of the trees that experienced the Great War are still living today, out stripping the short life spans of the men they once cradled in their branches or sheltered amongst their roots, and even surviving a subsequent World War, and beyond.

Lucinda Moore

Too see a selection of tree-themed WWI images follow this link - http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=37558

The Tank of England - raising funds with Britain's new weapon

100 years ago today, British Mark I tanks lumbered into action at Flers-Courcelette, marking a new shift in modern warfare.  Flers may be a significant anniversary but the tanks on that day had limited success. Moving at just four miles an hour, seven tanks failed to start and only four made any meaningful progress.  Winston Churchill, a prominent champion of the tank, felt they had been employed in battle too soon, writing “My poor land battleships have been let off prematurely on a petty scale.”  Nevertheless, the Germans, whose bullets made little impact against the metal monsters, were severely ruffled by this unexpected development and the press at home made optimistic noises about this new great hope.  The Tatler commented:

Mr Winston Churchill, Colonel Swinton and anybody else who is responsible for the adopton of this very novel complement to our fighting force are to be sincerely congratulated.  It is indeed a healthy sign that we have freed ourselves from imitation of the enemy's poisonous and unfair methods of warfare and have regained the initiative in invention as well as in tactics over our opponents.  The development of this particularly form of offensive seems illimitable in extent and we may have some further surprises for the foe in the future.

Lagging behind the British, German tank technology would never quite catch up and British tanks did indeed play a pivotal role in future combat making a real impact a year later at the Battle of Cambrai.  

As a symbol of British success on the Western Front, and as a source of intense fascination among the public, the tank was held in special regard.  A Regent Street retailer began to sell handbags in the shape of a tank and one reference in The Sketch from October 1917 even reports on a new-born baby girl, whose father was serving with the tanks, being christened "Tankie"!   Exploiting the current curiosity about tanks, they were employed in a very different role in the autumn of 1917 when, following success at Cambrai, some were repurposed as a fundraising tool.  Throughout the war, but particularly in the latter part, there was a continuous campaign to encourage the public to buy war bonds - a system where people could loan their savings to help finance the war.  As the war progressed, increasingly imaginative ways to persuade British civilians to invest in war bonds were required so after a number of tanks took part in the 1917 Lord Mayor's Parade, one settled in Trafalgar Square, under the gaze of Lord Nelson, as a temporary bank.  Around the same time, another was used in New York in connection with the Liberty loan, and others toured around Britain.  Well-known figures set a patriotic example by publicly depositing money - the popular Julia James led other actresses from the Gaiety Theatre, just a short distance away, to buy their war bonds in front of adoring fans.

The enterprise was a roaring success - The Tatler described the rapid business being done:

The vision of 'Julian'* swallowing war bonds by the million in Trafalgar Square with the complacency of an elephant poaching his ha'penny buns on a bank holiday at the zoo.

*presumably the tank was named in honour of General Julian Byng, in command at Cambrai.

Proving a popular attraction, the tank became a regular feature at further fundraising events.  During Tank Week in March 1918, a genuine tank a veteran of Cambrai was again exhibited in Trafalgar Square.  Anyone wishing to look inside could do so after purchasing war bonds, and the band of the Coldstream Guards was requisitioned by cigarette company Drapkin's to provide tunes, adding to the carnival atmosphere.  Society ladies volunteered to administer the war bond process and one reporter in The Sketch remarked how a female friend of his, 'bought several War Bonds she could ill afford in order to have a close look at Lady Swaythling's pretty frock'.      

Phrynette, The Sketch magazine's gossip columnist described the scene. 

I paid an early afternoon call on 'Egbert of Cambrai' now in Trafalgar Square, somewhat battered, four men having been killed in him recently.  Two charming, fur-clad ladies were sitting on ammunition cases inside, very busy stamping war certificates, and a brace of sentries guarded his hull carefully.  There was a tremendous crowd in the Square and hawkers were doing a brisk business in postcards etc.  The crowd was certainly half of it in khaki and there were numbers of wounded blue taking a cheerful interest in things.

Several other exhibits added to the novelty.  There was a mobile pigeon-cote used at the front from which Queen Alexandra purchased war certificates, and Lady Drogheda distributed leaflets from the gondola of a captured German Zeppelin.

Tanks were a focal point for deposits during Businessman's War Bond Week, also held in March 1918 when in London, six tanks were stationed in various boroughs and business owners and manufacturers pledged to encourage their employees to visit and raise funds.  Londoners were challenged not only to vie with one another to see who could raise the most money, but was expected to raise more than the combined subscriptions of the rest of the country.  The Bystander felt that pitting one London borough against another rather pointless arguing there was no such thing as 'local patriotism'.

Among the images on this subject in our archive are several examples of metal or china 'tank banks' from the David Cohen collection - an alternative piggy bank encouraging people to save their pennies and, through their contributions and investment, bring the war to an end.

The tank not only made a difference on the battlefield, but as an emblem of British ingenuity helped to keep the country's coffers full as the war rumbled on. 

 

© Luci Gosling/Mary Evans Picture Library

To see more tank images follow this link: http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=36735

   

 

 

 

 

Finding Food in London: Making parks and waste places fruitful

     

     Mr Hubert Hall at work in the gardens around Chancery Lane   

Food shortages and rationing brought by naval blockades during World War One meant producing home grown food became an essential part of life on the home front. City dwellers had their part to play in this, and Londoners were no exception, creatively transforming their civic spaces into productive places to aid “the growing of vegetables for victory”. Here, using recently uncovered material from the archive, we take a look at how weekly magazine, The Graphic covered the sometimes rather incongruous conversion of well-known London spaces into fruitful Edens.

                              

                            

 

In September 1917, the gardens around the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane were turned over to the production of vegetables, and The Graphic was there to document it. Mr Hubert Hall, resident officer of the Public Record Office, was responsible for tending to the grounds, which had brought forth an impressive range of vegetables, including artichokes, carrots, parsnips, marrows and tomatoes. Under the direction of the Superintendent of Regent’s Park, Mr Hall took over the duties of the official gardener in war time, the work for which was patriotically all done before or after office hours. Though the soil was thin, as it reportedly barely covered the foundations of the Old Rolls House, better ground elsewhere was utilised, namely the spacious garden belonging to the master of the Rolls House, which extends to the back of Fetter Lane. The Graphic reports that this ground is credited with saving the Rolls House and Chapel during the Great Fire of London in 1665; it could be that this ground was once again a protector of London in her hour of need, though the danger this time related to food security, rather than fire.

Left: Women gardeners digging in gardens  in Fleet Street

          

 

 

        

 

Above:  Soldiers in the gardens of the Natural History Museum

The gardens of the Natural History Museum in Kensington were also turned over to vegetable cultivation, tended by staff and convalescent soldiers under the guidance of the Superintendent of Hyde Park. The Graphic noted in October 1917 that “Great skill has been shown in utilising all available space…The potatoes grown in these gardens are particularly fine, and completely do away with the idea that soil in the heart of London is not suitable for the growing of vegetables.” French beans, artichokes marrows and many other green vegetables were reported to have done extremely well in this environment.

           
            Diagram in The Sphere advising readers how to start work on a raw piece of ground in order to create an allotment, March 1918

Compulsory rationing would be introduced the following year, accompanied by a flurry of Graphic articles, celebrating food production in the capital. In March 1918, it reported that at Clissfold Park in north London, hundreds of policemen were given plots of land to cultivate, accompanied by pictures of disused brickfields that had been converted into cabbage fields. School children from Stroud Green were pressed into service, pictured harvesting Brussels sprouts and wielding gardening tools, with the playground at Stationers’ School even being turned into cultivatable land.

                                                            

Three months later, The Graphic published a trio of images in July 1918, showing King George and Queen Mary visiting small allotments in south London. In one, the monarch inspects an enormous cabbage, whilst in another, Queen Mary can be seen beaming as she is proudly shown a piglet, held aloft by a delighted producer.

                                                      

In August 1918, a page was devoted to showing how the area in front of the Victoria Memorial at Buckingham Palace had been converted into a potato patch. Also pictured were flower beds at Finsbury Park in north London, which were planted with beetroots, with plots divided up for parsnips.

Wartime necessity meant that the underutilised internal resources of the capital had literally to be dug into, and whilst spare food may have been scarce, initiative and creativity was not.

The very earth of the city was nurtured to bring forth not just much needed sustenance, but arguably used to bring about community and fellowship amongst growers from many different walks of life. From school children to office workers to policemen, the growing of food for Londoners by Londoners was seen as newsworthy by The Graphic and something to celebrate. The Graphic doesn’t dwell on the therapeutic aspect of being part of the process of cultivating your own food, but there is a taste of the joy of home grown in their pictorial celebrations of the growing of food in the most unlikely of urban settings.

To see these & more images on WW1 vegetable gardening follow this link http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=35922

Lucinda Moore

Jack Cornwell VC - The Boy Hero of Jutland remembered a century on

                                                  

The news that the grave of John Travers Cornwell V.C. in Manor Park Cemetery, East London has been given Grade II listed status by Historic England today has once more drawn attention to a figure whose courage during the Battle of Jutland won him the Victoria Cross posthumously, and, in the public consciousness, transformed him from an ordinary East London delivery boy into a legendary figure embodying the much-lauded qualities of heroism and self-sacrifice.  Paving stones in Cornwell's memory will also be laid in the area while his name will already be familiar to local residents in Manor Park as a street, block of flats and community centre are all named after him.  A nearby pub is called 'The Victoria Cross' in his honour and in 2001 the London Borough of Newham introduced The Jack Cornwell Bravery Award, which has been presented annually in recognition for outstanding acts of bravery by Newham people.  I live less than a mile away from Manor Park Cemetery, so it feels as if his story has a particular significance but in fact, Cornwell's name is well-known way beyond his local area, and his story continues to strike an emotive chord, despite the passage of one hundred years. 

                                          
    

John Travers Cornwell, known as Jack, was born 8 January 1900 in Clyde Cottage, Clyde Place, Leyton. He was the son of working-class parents, Eli and Lily Cornwell (formerly King) and had two brothers: Ernest, born in 1898, George (1901) and a sister Lily (1905). He also had a half-brother named Arthur (1888) and a half-sister named Alice (1890). Their mother was Alice Cornwell (formerly Carpenter). In 1911 Jack was in the care of the West Ham Poor Law Union and living in one of its children's homes in Romford Road, Forest Gate. He later moved with his family to 10 Alverstone Road, Little Ilford, Manor Park. Jack attended Walton Road School in Manor Park and was a keen Boy Scout in the Little Ilford Troop at St Mary's Mission.  When Jack left school he became a delivery boy for Brooke Bond & Co. and then worked as a dray boy with the Whitbread's Brewery Depot in Manor Park.

At the outbreak of war, Jack's father Eli, an ex-soldier, re-enlisted as a Private in the 57th Coy. Royal Defence Corps.  Attracted to the Royal Navy, at the age of 15 Jack took references from his Headmaster and his employer along to a local recruitment office and enlisted.  He was sent to Keyham Naval Barracks in Plymouth for his basic training where he earned sixpence a week as a "Boy Second Class". He passed out as Boy First Class J. T. Cornwell J/42563 and when he left Keyham, he was posted to H.M.S. Lancaster which was moored at Chatham. Jack was later ordered to join the fleet at Rosyth in Scotland and on the 2nd of May 1916 he joined the newly commissioned H.M.S. Chester.

On 31 May 1916, HMS Chester was scouting ahead of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet of 150 British ships.  They had set sail from base the previous day in response to intelligence that the German fleet was putting to sea. Around 5.30pm, Chester was sent to investigate distant gun flashes amid a bank of mist. Suddenly, four German light cruisers appeared and opened fire. A hail of heavy shells fell all around Chester, hitting the ship seventeen times. Extensive damage to the ship's guns meant that she could take no further part in the battle and at dawn on 1 June was ordered back to port. The ship suffered casualties of 35 killed or died of wounds and 42 wounded.

Among them was Jack Cornwell, who had remained at his post as a sight-setter awaiting orders, the sole survivor of his gun turret team who had all fallen, dead or wounded.  Jack suffered numerous shrapnel wounds and when he was relieved of his post, he was found with metal shards penetrating his chest.  He was taken to Grimsby Hospital where he died on 2 June, aged just 16. 

His body was returned to his family in London and buried in a communal grave in June but when the inspirational story of Cornwell's bravery and devotion to duty was taken up by the national newspapers, the strength of public opinion led to a campaign to provide this national hero with a more fitting burial.  The following month, in July 1916, Cornwell was reburied in the same cemetery with full naval honours. The funeral procession included the Mayor of East Ham, the Bishop of Barking as well as  80 boys from Jack's former school, six boy sailors from HMS Chester and local boy scouts.

On 15 September 1916, Jack Cornwell was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for valour in the face of the enemy. The citation for his award recorded how 'mortally wounded early in the action, Boy, First Class, Jack Travers Cornwell remained standing alone at a most exposed post, quietly awaiting orders, until the end of the action, with the gun's crew dead and wounded all around him. His age was under sixteen and a half years'.  A Jack Cornwell Day in the same month sought to honour his memory, while the donations that poured in to the Jack Cornwell Memorial Fund amounted to enough to pay for a new ward at the Star and Garter Hospital for wounded servicemen in Richmond.

                                              

Cornwell's name and image would ever after be synonymous with the qualities of heroism and duty, and his story was an essential inclusion in any 'Boy's Own' style book or magazine celebrating brave deeds and derring do.  Among the images we hold here at the library is an example by Charles Dixon in, 'Deeds that Thrill the Empire' and another by Fortunino Matania in The Sphere.  The iconic photograph of him which appeared in all newspapers at the time is now thought to more likely be one of his brothers, and does look distinctly different to a commemorative VC Cornwell postcard we hold featuring a portrait of Jack. 

Cornwell is the third-youngest recipient of the VC. The epitaph on his gravestone reads: "It is not wealth or ancestry but honourable conduct and a noble disposition that maketh men great."

                                      

Follow this link to see our selection of Jack Cornwell images http://www.maryevans.com/lb.php?ref=35781

Luci Gosling

 

Fields of Battle - Lands of Peace: Somme 100 - An interview with battlefield photographer, Mike Sheil

     

        Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont Hamel © WesternFrontPhotography.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10577725)

As the centenary anniversary of the Battle of the Somme approaches, we talk with battlefield photographer and Mary Evans contributor, Mike St Maur Sheil about his extraordinary battlefield photographs, soon to be the subject of a commemorative exhibition at the Guildhall Yard in the City of London.

 

Looking at your photographs, you are obviously very familiar with the battlefields of France and Belgium.  How did you begin photographing them?

In early 2005 I began to realise that carrying kit up vertical ladders and shooting in heavy industry might lose its appeal when I got to be 60+ so started thinking about centenary events for possible books and so on, and realised the First World War Centenary was not far off. I knew nothing about the history so I went and saw a well known British military historian, Professor Richard Holmes.

He liked my idea and so I photographed a couple of battlefields: he liked the results and we started working together.  The concept of the exhibition and its content is something which evolved over many glasses of good red ‘infuriator'.

    

    Unexploded shells unearthed by ploughing near Munich Trench Cemetery © WesternFrontPhotography/Mary Evans (Picture no. 10577582)

What place do you feel has resulted in the most effective photographs?  Do you have a favourite location?

So many places have produced pictures with which I feel really satisfied. I hate the description of ‘lucky’ shots because you have to be in the right place at that instant and really what you are doing is merely taking advantage of the circumstances. My point is that as the photographer you have to create those circumstances, that 'luck', by actually being there, ready and able to shoot.
 

For most people, it’s difficult to imagine what the battlefields looked like 100 years ago.  How do you think your images of them today can help people connect with the past and does this inform the way in which you take pictures? 

Very definitely: everyone takes pictures these days so they relate very swiftly to images of different places. I am very conscious of the history of men and events so I always try a shoot locations which have a story attached that I can then use to further enhance the picture.

    

    Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont Hamel, Somme - aerial view ©WesternFrontPhotography.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10921024)

A lot of your pictures have been shot in the early morning. You also appear to shoot from a low angle. What are your reasons for this?

I like shooting before sunrise as this is a time of day familiar to all the men in the trenches: the pre-dawn light was when they would all be roused and “standing-to” in the expectation that the enemy might attack. The low angle of my photographs comes from the simple fact that the men lived in trenches so their angle of view really was at ground level. I am merely trying to show the landscape as they would have seen it.

What kind of challenges have you encountered while taking your pictures in the area? 

The constant daily challenge was getting up 90 minutes before dawn to ensure that I was actually at the location I wanted to shoot 30 mins before  sun-rise. But the real challenge was creative: because the history of the landscape dictated where I had to shoot, I had no choice when it came to selecting my subject. Most landscape photographers will head for places which are already recognised for their beauty and visual impact - mountains, lakes, seascapes are the usual subject for such work - but I was faced with landscape whose ‘attraction’ was not visual but rather historical.

    

    Lochnagar Crater, blown at 07:28 on 1 July 1916 © WesternFrontPhotograph.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10577720)

Many of your images have a real sense of peace, calm and isolation.  How close to reality is that?  

 Today many of these places are indeed places of real beauty and tranquillity.  It is that contrast with the death and destruction of 100 years ago that I wish to emphasise.  I am always seeking to show that time and nature really have healed the scars of war.

Your pictures are a moving tribute to the people who fought and died in these areas, and we know at Mary Evans that they provoke an emotional reaction in the viewer.  For you, has there been any single place or background story that has particularly moved you?

I suppose that there are two shots which stick in my mind. There is the one of the London Irish ‘Loos Football’ taken on the very ground where men kicked it towards enemy trenches  in September 1915. The other is the photograph of the underground chapel at Confrecourt. This is a place where you really can reach out and touch the men of 14-18 and Richard Holmes told me that whenever he was there, he was always ‘deafened by the silent sound of the French soldiers singing the Marseillaise’. 

     

    Somme munitions in a private garden, recovered by the owner of the property © WesternFrontPhotography.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10809448)

Tell us about the Fields of Battle: Lands of Peace exhibitions.  How did the idea originate?

I saw the exhibition Earth from the Air created by Yyan Arthus-Bertrand and I just loved the way it drew in casual passers-by: probably 90% of people never go to museums or art galleries but this was attracting crowds of people. Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace is intended to act in the same way: it does not seek to teach the history of WWI but rather to entice passers-by to stop and see what it is all about.  After that, hopefully it will arouse their curiosity and maybe even persuade them to visit some of these battlefields.

And how have the exhibitions been received by the public?  

It has been phenomenal: the two exhibitions in Paris and London in 2014 had over 4 million visitors and a recent one in the Champs Elysées had over 600,000. It has been interesting to find out how many people have re-visited several times and the best comment was made by a gentleman on the day we were taking down the exhibition in St James’s Park, London. He asked one of the crew dis-mantling the exhibition whether it was indeed coming down and upon being told that it was exclaimed, ‘Thank God for that! Now I will get to work on time.'

    

     British observation post near Hebuterne on the Somme, built in 1917 and overlooking Gommecourt Wood.  © WesternFrontPhotography.com/Mary Evans (picture no. 10809451)

What’s next for Fields of Battle photography?  

We will be opening a Somme exhibition in the Guildhall Yard in the City of London on 1 June. That will be moving to Belfast in July and thereafter to Dublin in late August as part of a cross-border reconciliation project to show both communities how the events of WW1 were a common experience and deserve a common remembrance.

I am talking with the American National World War I Museum about an American exhibition to tour the US in ’17 & ’18 and of course there is the end of the war on 11 November ’18 so obviously I am hoping that we will still be able make a contribution to that event.

After that: fishing, walking my grey-hound and visits to battlefields without having to get up early in the morning :-))

Fields of Battles, Lands of Peace: Somme 100 runs from 1 June to 3 July 2016 at the Guildhall Yard, City of London.  As part of an accompanying lecture programme, Mary Evans' Luci Gosling will be talking about the WWI art of Fortunino Matania at St. Lawrence Jewry church in the City at 6pm on 22 June - free entry.  For more details, visit the Corporation of London's website - http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/things-to-do/visit-the-city/whats-on/Pages/somme.aspx

© Luci Gosling/Mary Evans.  With thanks to Mike for his time.

 

Tea and Tuppence - The Fortune of War Cafes

Our last blog post looked at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Free Buffets, designed to offer men arriving and departing from London’s rail terminals with food and drink to ease their ongoing journey. Remaining on the food theme, this time we look at an enterprise that aimed to offer employment to men disabled or invalided by war – the Fortune of War cafes.

In my book, ‘Great War Britain’ (History Press, 2014), I mention the Fortune of War café on Edgware Road in connection with a brief report in one magazine which mentioned how they were serving experimental rock cakes made from potato during a time when the public were being urged to practice food control.

                                         
                                                                               Illustration by Gladys Peto in The Sketch, 21 November 1917

But recently, flicking through a 1917 volume of The Sketch magazine, I found another reference to the Fortune of War café and discovered that the Edgware Road branch was just one of several dotted around London, and that the chain, which was founded by an invalided officer of the South Staffordshire Territorials, Lieutenant J. E. Latham, was run along enterprising lines in order to offer men who could not return to their old jobs an opportunity to forge a new career working within a sustainable business.  It was, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, ‘an incident that allows disabled soldiers to snap their fingers in the face of charity and earn a living for themselves.’

Latham began the first Fortune of War café, located on Kilburn Road, ‘just outside the North Western railway station’, in February 1917, with his own personal funds along with contributions from four other anonymous investors, though Latham told an interviewer that two were City bankers and another ‘a gentleman of private means’. By September 1917, one of the investors had been tragically killed in action.  Each café cost about £400 to set up, and once a number were established, Latham encouraged the public to invest in shares from £10 upwards.  Those who invested £50 or more could nominate a disabled soldier for employment at one of the cafes. 

On 11 February 1918, a dinner was held at the Lyceum Club in support of the enterprise. It was a chaired by Miss Jessie Dunbar, who seems to have acted as chairperson and consultant for the cafes (she also wrote a book of food economy recipes in collaboration with Lady Glenconner for the Red Cross). Lady Maud Warrender gave a singing recital; the Duchess of Norfolk subscribed £200. The Times reported on a speech given by Latham in which he outlined his motivation:

‘Men returned daily unable to follow their old employment owing to wounds, rheumatism, and other disabilities. In 1915 he (Latham) had as part of his work to be on duty in London at night, and he frequently found men broken in the war – and broken in pocket, also – congregating at coffee stalls, and this suggested the idea that they might be better employed inside.  With the assistance of brother officers the first open-air café was built.’

Latham was quoted in the Detroit Free Press in September 1917, describing his own personal experiences at meeting such men:

‘I used to meet some of these men on the street late at night. They were absolutely penniless and they’d ask me for sixpences for a bed or a bite to eat.  Many of them had lost a leg or had a shoulder blown away, but they were not totally disabled, and were able to do some sort of work if they could find a job.  Some of them wore decorations – but a V.C. doesn’t exactly get you a job when you’ve been discharged from the army.’

As soon as news spread of Latham’s idea, letters poured in to him at his home at 26 Aldridge Road Villas in Notting Hill offering money and sites for free. But he was determined that the Fortune of War cafés would succeed as a business venture rather than a charity, and within a short time, the Kilburn café was making enough profit to invest in a further site in Edgware Road, next to the Metropolitan Music Hall.  Another was opened in Hackney and by February 1918, when The Times was reporting on the Lyceum Club meeting, there was also a branch in Aldwych, occupying the Spotted Dog. 

The majority of men employed by the cafes had been privates in the army, with many having backgrounds as farm or manual workers, though some non-commissioned officers also applied to work there. Most of the cafes were run by a team of ten with the staff hierarchy mirroring that of the army – new employees would begin as privates and would be promoted to corporal while a man in charge of each café would be a sergeant-major with subordinates addressing him as ‘mister’.  Wages were high – between £2 5 shillings and £2 10 shillings a week and breakfast, lunch or dinner were provided depending on shift hours.  Together with the disability pension most men qualified for, it meant they could earn a decent, living wage and take pride in being part of a congenial, thriving workplace. 

                                                                  

                                                             


                                                               Illustration by Samuel Begg in The Illustrated London News, 26 January 1918 

 

The cafes themselves were inspired by the pavement cafes and estaminets of Paris fulfilling, according to the Illustrated London News, ‘a long-felt want’ for an affordable but cosmopolitan style of dining destination. Small tables and chairs allowed customers to enjoy a cup of tea and slice of cake in the sunshine after they had been served from a counter.  On inclement days, canvas curtains could be drawn around to protect customers from the wind or rain.  The cafes sported a smart, dark green livery and had branded tea cups and saucers bearing a lion’s head crest and the words, ‘Fortune of War’.  At the Edgware Road branch, on a mirror forming the backdrop to the counter was the inscription, ‘Licensed to see Tobacco and Stamps – Founded for the Employment of Disabled Soldiers and Sailors.’  To the left of this:

‘The fortune of war, be you so bold, Is a mound of earth or a stripe of gold.’

The stripe of gold was of course the insignia worn by wounded men. The mound of earth needed little explanation.

For the remainder of the war, Latham’s Fortune of War cafes continued to do a roaring trade. Marthe Troly-Curtin, writing in her column, ‘Phrynette’s Letter from London’ in The Sketch, 21 November 1917 gave a glowing summary of their success:

‘The Fortune of War cafes, founded by Lieutenant E. J. Latham, flourish in spite of food problems. The disabled men who man these cafes are very happy in their work, and both officers and men buy their tea and coffee – made from the best materials, look you, as Mr Lloyd George would say.’

The comment was accompanied by a charming illustration by Gladys Peto giving an impression of a Fortune of War café with its pleasant outdoor seating area. A less stylised page of illustrations by Samuel Begg in The Illustrated London News also gives us a wonderfully clear picture.  How long the Fortune of War cafes lasted beyond the war is less clear.  Our digital archive gives us no clues, nor do other newspaper archives consulted, but it would be gratifying to think that Latham’s entrepreneurial spirit had longevity beyond the war years, fulfilling his original vision to provide satisfying employment in a profitable business for men who had sacrificed so much.

                                                                        

© Luci Gosling